Piers 30-32 have been in need of a renovation. The America's Cup organizers would have been the ones to make a renovation of the dilapidated piers happen.

Photo: Sean Culligan, The Chronicle

Piers 30-32 have been in need of a renovation. The America's Cup...

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Piers 30-32 have been in need of a renovation. The America's Cup organizers would have been the ones to make a renovation of the dilapidated piers happen.

Photo: Sean Culligan, The Chronicle

Piers 30-32 have been in need of a renovation. The America's Cup...

Image 4 of 6

Piers 30-32 had been envisioned to house team bases for competitors in the 34th America's Cup. Officials have scuttled use of the pier as a regatta facility because of uncertainty over repair costs and a tight construction time frame.

Photo: Courtesy Of America's Cup Event

Piers 30-32 had been envisioned to house team bases for competitors...

Image 5 of 6

Piers 30-32 have been in need of a renovation. The America's Cup organizers would have been the ones to make a renovation of the dilapidated piers happen.

Photo: Sean Culligan, The Chronicle

Piers 30-32 have been in need of a renovation. The America's Cup...

Image 6 of 6

Piers 30-32 have been in need of a renovation. The America's Cup organizers would have been the ones to make a renovation of the dilapidated piers happen.

San Francisco port officials revealed Tuesday that they are considering spending $18 million or more in city funds to upgrade waterfront areas for the 2013 America's Cup regatta, including $7 million to $8 million to partially overhaul Piers 30-32, which were once envisioned as the spectator hub or team bases for the event.

This would be a complete revamp of a deal that initially had been based on providing development rights and long-term leases to race organizers in exchange for fixing piers the city couldn't afford to overhaul.

But the America's Cup Event Authority, the business arm of the regatta group led by billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, balked at making a $111 million investment in infrastructure work. Particularly challenging was doing a $60 million construction job in nine months to make Piers 30-32 ready for the event, with the prospect of spending millions more to prepare them for development.

Under the current scaled-back proposal, which is still tentative, the port, a city department, would pay the infrastructure costs but also get the revenue from leasing the properties. It could borrow to provide the up-front money.

Piers 30-32 would be used to house up to five sailing team bases, as originally proposed.

The idea drew support from the Port Commission at Tuesday's meeting, with Commissioner F.X. Crowley praising staff for being "nimble enough to turn on a dime."

"Bringing Piers 30-32 back into play is great for the races and great for the city," she said, "but we have not reached an agreement."

Neither city officials nor race organizers would discuss the parameters of the deal, which is still being hashed out. It is expected to be presented to the Board of Supervisors on March 27.

"We're really excited about the prospects of being on 30-32 because that would be a great experience for the teams," said Stephanie Martin, a spokeswoman for race organizers. "But it's still too premature to discuss any details."

With the spectator village slated for Piers 27-29 at the base of Telegraph Hill, Piers 30-32 would create event bookends along the Embarcadero's most pedestrian-friendly section, in close proximity to streetcars and Muni light rail. The plan at this point calls for the teams to be based on Pier 80 in an industrial section of the southeast waterfront.

For more than a year, the city had eyed the weeks of races that comprise sailing's premier competition as a vehicle to redevelop Piers 30-32, where various plans for a cruise ship terminal and everything from a movie theater to offices have failed. When the race committee decided not to use the piers, however, the city's plans seemed doomed.

But now, the city says it can fix parts of the piers - which are unsafe to the point where no heavy trucks are allowed - for $7 million to $8 million.

That would include creating a truck lane for equipment drop-off and setting team bases on steel girders overlaying existing pilings. The bases would be clustered along the southern edge of Pier 32 around an area that is structurally strong. Because only a portion of the piers would be used, stricter, more costly seismic upgrade requirements wouldn't kick in, said Brad Benson, special projects manager for the port.

The piers are expected to be condemned in 10 years, but the fixes for the Cup should extend the life of those areas for about 20 to 30 years, Benson said. After the event, Piers 30-32 could be used as a secondary berth for cruise ships, he said.

City officials said the partial rebuild idea only surfaced now because they had been focused on long-term development options for a piece of the waterfront that has been slowly crumbling into the bay.

"The city was thinking big and trying to come up with a way to see not just the short-term, but the long-term improvements and benefits that the America's Cup could bring to the city," Falvey said.